Now Roman is to Roman More hateful than a foe,
And the Tribunes beard the high, And the Fathers grind the low.
As we wax hot in faction, In battle we wax cold:
Wherefore men fight not as they fought In the brave days of old.
How Horatius Held the Bridge, Lord Macaulay
Pentagon brass took time away yesterday from their busy schedule of dreaming up excuses for why they lost the coming war with China to attack Tucker Carlson for saying some unpleasant truths about our politicized military. The Left destroys everything it touches and the US military is thoroughly infected with their poison. Politicized militaries tend to be good for suppression of dissident populations but much less effective at winning foreign wars. I predict that the Democrat Military will be pretty ineffective at both.
Every day in every way our country deteriorates. The tipping point grows nearer every day.
I like the way they wrap themselves in “combat and moral courage” over diversifying the military even to include pregnant women.
In agreement with Michael Dowd.
Our vaunarblity isn’t just seen in the national arena. It’s witnessed around the world. If a power wanted to collapse the US of A, a good time to do it is when America leadership is more concerned about hairstyles than national security.
A Biden/Harris playground is perfect for the bully over the pond to kick some butt.
Easy catch, the US. Preoccupied with girls becoming men becoming girls becoming offended and nothing else matters. The woke generation is going to wake up alright. In occupied territory.
I’ve been saying for years that this was the biggest problem facing the military.
I was on active duty until the end of the 8th month of my first pregnancy. Being pregnant did not effect the performance of my duties. I was however a member of an admiral’s personal staff, a flag secretary. The flag lieutenant and I did travel with the admiral on occasion but we were a non deploying staff. Big difference. As a couple we decided that I would be a stay at home mom. My request was granted to surrender my regular navy status and transfer to the reserves.
My personal opinion is that women do not belong in combat. That includes combat air. We have had women POWs and they were not, shall I say, treated with respect. This, of course, was not reported in the press. There are many dangerous occupations in the services, even in peacetime. I considered it a moral obligation not to endanger my unborn child or myself by working in any situation that might have caused miscarriage, still birth, birth defects or infertility.
CAM
Excellent point and I applaud your perspective.
Joe Biden avoided service during Vietnam and I doubt that he realizes that some killing at the infantry level is to close to use a rifle and tools used to kill may be a bayonet, entrenching tool or a large rock. In some military environments large men with brute strength have a survival advantage:
Unfortunately when I was on active duty I saw many women, especially young an enlisted, who were treated with little respect by our military and little support from her chain of command.
When on active duty as a Catholic physician I was particularly annoyed at the obsession with expecting women on sea duty to be on a contraceptive with little concern for informed consent about risks and side effects upon health as well as fertility.
The worse case I was involved with was when I was tasked to send a young woman from an isolated duty station to Singapore to have an abortion that she didn’t want. The baby’s father, and her mother wanted her to have an abortion and refused to help her. Her officer in charge advised her to have an abortion even had her sign a page 13 stating that she would be administratively discharged if she was a single mother without someone designated to care for her baby.
I managed to send her to a Navy Hospital in Japan and at that time abortions were illegal in military hospitals. Fortunately she was able to get the social support she needed to avoid an abortion she didn’t want and was just transferred to a duty station that was not isolated.
I suspect that events like this in our military are more common then we would expect, certainly not an empowering environment for a woman.
The problem is the top brass regarding woman in uniform didn’t think it through and it sounds like they don’t think it through now. It’s all about being politically correct. When being politically correct doesn’t work out then they lie.
Bless you, Dr. Patrick, for saving that young woman and her child.
Many years ago there was a rash of pregnancies at the Naval Station Annapolis. If followed a a huge increase in female sailors and officers navy wide. The NavSta was sent more non rated women than there were billets and C school was not available to them. So they were assigned to the small boats division. Scraping paint, compartment cleaning and other mundane jobs on the YPs and Knockabouts were their duties with no training to look forward to. The gals figured out that if they were pregnant they’d get light duty chits because of heavy lifting and chemical fumes. Soon the WAVE barracks was like a nursery. The women in the BEQ w/o babies complained to the division officer and the XO. BUPERS would not open any schools quotas for the women. Finally a female first class boatswain reported aboard to head up the crew of the superintendent’s barge. She was attractive, knew her stuff, a good role model and she was instrumental in finding career paths for those WAVES that wanted to stay in.
Speaking of abortion – on the flag staff in Norfolk we had a female third class radioman. No self esteem, poor hygiene, and pretty dumb. “Thadine” was what one would call a survivor. No one could figure out how she made rate and was assigned to a flag staff. Though she didn’t work for me, I had to counsel her. One day she told me that she had trichinosis and the clinic needed her boyfriend to come in for testing. I explained that trichinosis was a disease of hogs and that she probably had VD, trichomonas. On the ride over to her Gyn appt and my OB appt she told me that she was pregnant, but that the doctors weren’t sure she could carry to term since she had had 4 abortions. In those days sea duty for female radiomen was an isolated aka hardship duty station. She had been assigned to Harold Holt CommSta in Australia, Midway Is., Iceland, etc. Each time she would get pregnant, sent home to CONUS where she obtained an abortion and have shore duty in the US. She matter of fact told me that while she was pregnant with the last aborted baby, she could feel the baby kicking. I felt sick. She separated from the navy, got married and delivered the baby.
My brother is a retired flight surgeon. I’ll have to ask him if pulling Gs and the fumes of AvGas are detrimental to the health of in utero babies. My layperson’s guess is that it is.
CAM
All very good points. It seems that these “women empowering” policies actually result in the exploitation of women, with the weakest being the most vulnerable.
An Iraqi interpreter once told me that Americans were the only people he has meet that believe their own government’s propaganda.